The EU’s green energy solution could bring on a food crisis

The EU’s governments have, it is clear, already decided that biofuel is one of the fuels of the future. Earlier this year, governments submitted to the European Commission national plans for renewable energy – and these suggest that industrial biofuel will represent up to 95% of renewable fuels used in the transport sector by 2020.

This is one policy that, even in these straitened times, member states are throwing their money behind, offering billions of euros per year in subsidies to companies that help them meet the 2020 targets.

This spells huge profits for producers of biofuel. They will be heavily subsidised to produce for a market that EU governments are determined to expand by 200% between now and 2020.

But industrial biofuel is not a green solution for the EU’s energy needs. And there will be big losers – the poor in the developing world.

Studies by ActionAid and our partners show that biofuels are often more damaging than the fossil fuels they are replacing. The EU’s targets require mass land clearance and existing production to be moved. Once this change in land use is taken into account, the projected level of the EU’s demand for biofuel in 2020 will result in the release of an extra 27-56 million tonnes of greenhouse gases per year into the atmosphere – equivalent to an extra 12m-26m cars on our roads by 2020.

But the production of biofuel also has huge social impacts that the Commission has chosen to ignore completely in its sustainability criteria. More than five million hectares of land – an area bigger than Denmark – is needed to grow the amount of biofuel that Europe projects it will need annually in 2020 and beyond. The national action plans clearly show that most member states do not have enough land available to meet this increase in demand. They are therefore looking to plug the gap through imports – the UK, for example, expects to import almost 90% of its biofuel by 2020.

To provide the biofuel needed to meet the EU’s targets, EU companies are busy buying up land. But in doing so, they could cause another food crisis in Africa.

The land that is being bought by EU companies is not standing idle. Small-scale farmers – producers of half the world’s food – are having their land taken away, often under duress, to make way for the crops needed to meet EU targets. At a time of already high food prices, they are losing their land and, with it, their ability to grow their own food.

The food security of poor communities – and nearly one billion people around the world currently go hungry – is being put at risk.

EU leaders are keen to emphasise the trickle-down effects of biofuel production for local communities. Even at the theoretical level, the trickle down will not happen quickly enough to provide new livelihoods for the farmers who sell their land to biofuel producers and for their communities. But biofuel production is generally on an industrial scale and creates few jobs. And profits, rather than trickling down, are shipped back to Europe along with the fuel.

For some African farmers, biofuel amounts to a one-time cash inflow from the sale of their land. For their communities, though, it produces few jobs, little biofuel and a greater risk of hunger. For European consumers, biofuel does not amount to the green alternative that it is sold as. Both the Commission and the member states have got the policy wrong – opting for industrial biofuel as an easy solution ahead of the more difficult option of increasing energy efficiency and reducing consumption.

The EU is clearly prioritising its energy policy over development policy, and that energy policy is not even green. Until it is proved that biofuel can be produced at sustainable levels – which the EU was unable to do even before the Renewable Energy Directive – it cannot be put forward as a green solution to our energy needs. The expansion of industrial biofuel production should be halted.Laura Sullivan is ActionAid’s European policy manager.

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jef

Yes this global warming cult is on its last legs. The new religion of the Euroweenies is being exposed as the fraud of all religious frauds. Between their Muslim cult and the global warming cult, they have created some wonderful fairy tails.

Posted on 12/9/10 | 1:39 PM CEST

jef

Yes this global warming cult is on its last legs. The new religion of the Euroweenies is being exposed as the fraud of all religious frauds. Between their Muslim cult and the global warming cult, they have created some wonderful fairy tails.

Posted on 12/9/10 | 1:39 PM CEST

jef

Yes this global warming cult is on its last legs. The new religion of the Euroweenies is being exposed as the fraud of all religious frauds. Between their Muslim cult and the global warming cult, they have created some wonderful fairy tails.

Posted on 12/9/10 | 1:39 PM CEST

jef

Yes this global warming cult is on its last legs. The new religion of the Euroweenies is being exposed as the fraud of all religious frauds. Between their Muslim cult and the global warming cult, they have created some wonderful fairy tails.

Posted on 12/9/10 | 1:39 PM CEST

Juan Manuel Ghersinich

Dear Sir, Dear Mrs. Sullivan,

As a sustainable source of energy for European states, biofuels play a significant role in the diversification of energy supplies.

As you state in your article, European investors need not add to the African food crisis by purchasing land for biofuel crops. Instead, the EU can (and should) benefit from Argentine biodiesel through both imports and direct investment.

Claiming unfair competition, the European biodiesel industry has lobbied to halt biodiesel imports from Argentina. Their main complaint is Argentina’s use of Differential Export Taxes (DETs). Currently, a tax of 35% of the FOB price is applied to unprocessed soybeans, compared to a rate of 17.5% for soy-based biodiesel. This is in compliance with the WTO and has long been a feature of Argentine fiscal policy. It is also an important tool in the creation of processing industries within the country. In contrast with European producers, who are heavily subsidized, Argentine producers receive no subsidies at all…

If the EU is to meet its binding targets – increasing consumption of renewable sources in the transport sector by 10% before 2020 – production levels will have to reach between 30 and 35 million tons of biodiesel per year, if not more. But EU production is falling far short of this target! Encouraged by support from the European Commission and member states, production capacity has increased over the past few years. Unfortunately, half of this capacity is idled due to insufficient demand, shortages of rapeseed oil for feedstock, or inefficiencies.

Argentina’s main soybean-growing region, adjacent to the port of Rosario in Santa Fe, is the largest oilseed processing cluster in the world. The country is now a major exporter and the world’s fifth largest biodiesel producer. Restriction of market access to the EU could lead to China replacing Europe as the main business partner in this industry.

Posted on 2/8/11 | 9:52 AM CEST

Juan Manuel Ghersinich

Dear Sir, Dear Mrs. Sullivan,

As a sustainable source of energy for European states, biofuels play a significant role in the diversification of energy supplies.

As you state in your article, European investors need not add to the African food crisis by purchasing land for biofuel crops. Instead, the EU can (and should) benefit from Argentine biodiesel through both imports and direct investment.

Claiming unfair competition, the European biodiesel industry has lobbied to halt biodiesel imports from Argentina. Their main complaint is Argentina’s use of Differential Export Taxes (DETs). Currently, a tax of 35% of the FOB price is applied to unprocessed soybeans, compared to a rate of 17.5% for soy-based biodiesel. This is in compliance with the WTO and has long been a feature of Argentine fiscal policy. It is also an important tool in the creation of processing industries within the country. In contrast with European producers, who are heavily subsidized, Argentine producers receive no subsidies at all…

If the EU is to meet its binding targets – increasing consumption of renewable sources in the transport sector by 10% before 2020 – production levels will have to reach between 30 and 35 million tons of biodiesel per year, if not more. But EU production is falling far short of this target! Encouraged by support from the European Commission and member states, production capacity has increased over the past few years. Unfortunately, half of this capacity is idled due to insufficient demand, shortages of rapeseed oil for feedstock, or inefficiencies.

Argentina’s main soybean-growing region, adjacent to the port of Rosario in Santa Fe, is the largest oilseed processing cluster in the world. The country is now a major exporter and the world’s fifth largest biodiesel producer. Restriction of market access to the EU could lead to China replacing Europe as the main business partner in this industry.

Posted on 2/8/11 | 9:52 AM CEST

Juan Manuel Ghersinich

Dear Sir, Dear Mrs. Sullivan,

As a sustainable source of energy for European states, biofuels play a significant role in the diversification of energy supplies.

As you state in your article, European investors need not add to the African food crisis by purchasing land for biofuel crops. Instead, the EU can (and should) benefit from Argentine biodiesel through both imports and direct investment.

Claiming unfair competition, the European biodiesel industry has lobbied to halt biodiesel imports from Argentina. Their main complaint is Argentina’s use of Differential Export Taxes (DETs). Currently, a tax of 35% of the FOB price is applied to unprocessed soybeans, compared to a rate of 17.5% for soy-based biodiesel. This is in compliance with the WTO and has long been a feature of Argentine fiscal policy. It is also an important tool in the creation of processing industries within the country. In contrast with European producers, who are heavily subsidized, Argentine producers receive no subsidies at all…

If the EU is to meet its binding targets – increasing consumption of renewable sources in the transport sector by 10% before 2020 – production levels will have to reach between 30 and 35 million tons of biodiesel per year, if not more. But EU production is falling far short of this target! Encouraged by support from the European Commission and member states, production capacity has increased over the past few years. Unfortunately, half of this capacity is idled due to insufficient demand, shortages of rapeseed oil for feedstock, or inefficiencies.

Argentina’s main soybean-growing region, adjacent to the port of Rosario in Santa Fe, is the largest oilseed processing cluster in the world. The country is now a major exporter and the world’s fifth largest biodiesel producer. Restriction of market access to the EU could lead to China replacing Europe as the main business partner in this industry.

Posted on 2/8/11 | 9:52 AM CEST

Juan Manuel Ghersinich

Dear Sir, Dear Mrs. Sullivan,

As a sustainable source of energy for European states, biofuels play a significant role in the diversification of energy supplies.

As you state in your article, European investors need not add to the African food crisis by purchasing land for biofuel crops. Instead, the EU can (and should) benefit from Argentine biodiesel through both imports and direct investment.

Claiming unfair competition, the European biodiesel industry has lobbied to halt biodiesel imports from Argentina. Their main complaint is Argentina’s use of Differential Export Taxes (DETs). Currently, a tax of 35% of the FOB price is applied to unprocessed soybeans, compared to a rate of 17.5% for soy-based biodiesel. This is in compliance with the WTO and has long been a feature of Argentine fiscal policy. It is also an important tool in the creation of processing industries within the country. In contrast with European producers, who are heavily subsidized, Argentine producers receive no subsidies at all…

If the EU is to meet its binding targets – increasing consumption of renewable sources in the transport sector by 10% before 2020 – production levels will have to reach between 30 and 35 million tons of biodiesel per year, if not more. But EU production is falling far short of this target! Encouraged by support from the European Commission and member states, production capacity has increased over the past few years. Unfortunately, half of this capacity is idled due to insufficient demand, shortages of rapeseed oil for feedstock, or inefficiencies.

Argentina’s main soybean-growing region, adjacent to the port of Rosario in Santa Fe, is the largest oilseed processing cluster in the world. The country is now a major exporter and the world’s fifth largest biodiesel producer. Restriction of market access to the EU could lead to China replacing Europe as the main business partner in this industry.

By taking advantage of alternative sources, not only that we are going to save lots of money in the long run, but also our own planet by using a lot more safer and cleaner energy.Clean energy start increasing a lot because most of the energy we use today is coming from alternative energy sources.

By taking advantage of alternative sources, not only that we are going to save lots of money in the long run, but also our own planet by using a lot more safer and cleaner energy.Clean energy start increasing a lot because most of the energy we use today is coming from alternative energy sources.

By taking advantage of alternative sources, not only that we are going to save lots of money in the long run, but also our own planet by using a lot more safer and cleaner energy.Clean energy start increasing a lot because most of the energy we use today is coming from alternative energy sources.

By taking advantage of alternative sources, not only that we are going to save lots of money in the long run, but also our own planet by using a lot more safer and cleaner energy.Clean energy start increasing a lot because most of the energy we use today is coming from alternative energy sources.

Saving the planet is only possible if conservation of ecosystems for human life. Traditional energy (together with natural disasters and industrial accidents – often generated by man himself) will kill the civilization. The situation needs to urgently and radically intervene. Seeking the organization really interested in the possibility of the project clean energy – the energy conversion of gravity into electrical energy. http://www.energyland.org.ua
Sincerely, Lin.

Saving the planet is only possible if conservation of ecosystems for human life. Traditional energy (together with natural disasters and industrial accidents – often generated by man himself) will kill the civilization. The situation needs to urgently and radically intervene. Seeking the organization really interested in the possibility of the project clean energy – the energy conversion of gravity into electrical energy. http://www.energyland.org.ua
Sincerely, Lin.

Saving the planet is only possible if conservation of ecosystems for human life. Traditional energy (together with natural disasters and industrial accidents – often generated by man himself) will kill the civilization. The situation needs to urgently and radically intervene. Seeking the organization really interested in the possibility of the project clean energy – the energy conversion of gravity into electrical energy. http://www.energyland.org.ua
Sincerely, Lin.

Saving the planet is only possible if conservation of ecosystems for human life. Traditional energy (together with natural disasters and industrial accidents – often generated by man himself) will kill the civilization. The situation needs to urgently and radically intervene. Seeking the organization really interested in the possibility of the project clean energy – the energy conversion of gravity into electrical energy. http://www.energyland.org.ua
Sincerely, Lin.